I just recently got back from vacation. It was a cross-country motorcycle road trip. Before the trip I bought a new Panasonic FZ150. I love the new camera but to be honest, I didn't take any pictures that my old Kodak superzoom couldn't have taken. I did get to use some of the newer features of the camera though.
Many of the pictures of the trip were not taken with the FZ150 however, but with the old Nikon pocket camera. More on that in a bit.
I have a friend who originally got me interested in photography. He is by far a better photographer than I am and has much better equipment. His interest is portrait photography. Portrait photography is fiction. I hope it doesn't need to be said that this is not a bad thing, there is a lot of written fiction that is very good.
Some portrait photography is bad fiction. I can recall seeing family pictures (some that I'm in) with synthetic backgrounds, a wagon wheel in the background. Fake smiles with just as fake trees in the celluloid pull-down screen. Smiles covering unpleasantness with an approximation of a library out of focus behind. Horrid. I'd like to believe "family" portraits have universally gotten better in the last 40 years, but I won't hold my breath.
My friend has some pictures that are amazing. But, they are composed pictures and people wearing clothes they would not otherwise wear, in situations and poses that they would not be in if not for the camera. This is fiction.
At one time, I helped him with lighting as he was doing a shoot of models. One of the models was frankly not very attractive. Heroin sheek gone bad. The pictures of her were very flattering. I was amazed when I saw them. She, along with several other models had aspirations of law school. I'd bet anything it hasn't happened...for any of them.
On my recent vacation, many areas with gorgeous scenery were traversed. The Bitteroots and the Cascades were amazing. At the risk of taking an analogy too far, landscape photography is akin to documentary. It can be stunning, powerful, but also painfully boring. Ken Burns can take a great 2 hour informational movie and compress it into 14 long painful hours.
In my earlier motorcycle travels, many scenic pullouts where stopped at for pictures. After traveling all over North America for more than 10 years now, the scenery is still as stunning, but it begins to fall flat in pictures. No two mountains look the same, but the pictures in retrospect often do. Canyons, lakes, rivers, oceans and bluffs are all worthy of pictures but they can get somewhat redundant.
There were some amazing landscape shots taken on the trip. But looking at endless landscape photos of another person's vacation is like watching home movies (documentaries) about another person's children. It gets old quick.
Often, scenery can't be taken in by a picture. I love the big empty of western Dakotas and eastern Montana, but pictures don't do the expanse justice - even panoramas. I have found that pictures with a flat road running through them do give the feeling that exists when in these big empty areas. I have many pictures like this taken from the motorcycle while going down the road. I have a hard time deciding which I like better, but I'm probably alone in that respect.
But the picture that captures the vacation wasn't from one of these scenic areas. It happened at the Pacific Ocean, in Seaside, Oregon. I had just had my picture taken touching the Pacific Ocean and was walking back. A picture was taken that I didn't know about, and it caught me in one of those serene carefree moments rarely repeated.
The scene was near the apex of the trip. Physically about as far from home as I got on the trip. More importantly, metaphorically it was about as far from home as I got as well. The moment the camera caught me could be thought of as in complete apathy but not in a negative way. Relaxed without trying.
I wasn't sure if I should post the picture. Technically it is terrible. The late-day low-angle sunlight shrouds half my face in shadows. The people in the background are distracting. I'm in it and I do not like having my picture taken. On a motorcycle there is only room for so much clothes so I'm wearing atypical beach clothes; cargo shorts and a slightly grubby t-shirt, socks and cheapo imitation Chuck Taylor's.
Anybody looking through a stack of pictures would not give a second glance to this picture, and it isn't even one of my favorites. It probably is the picture I've gone back to more often though.
The moment that picture was taken though can't be repeated. It would not be possible to compose the moment in a portrait. It is a representation, a snapshot, of why vacation exists at all.
It is non-fiction. Like any non-fiction, it can help put reality in perspective - hopefully.
Many of the pictures of the trip were not taken with the FZ150 however, but with the old Nikon pocket camera. More on that in a bit.
I have a friend who originally got me interested in photography. He is by far a better photographer than I am and has much better equipment. His interest is portrait photography. Portrait photography is fiction. I hope it doesn't need to be said that this is not a bad thing, there is a lot of written fiction that is very good.
Some portrait photography is bad fiction. I can recall seeing family pictures (some that I'm in) with synthetic backgrounds, a wagon wheel in the background. Fake smiles with just as fake trees in the celluloid pull-down screen. Smiles covering unpleasantness with an approximation of a library out of focus behind. Horrid. I'd like to believe "family" portraits have universally gotten better in the last 40 years, but I won't hold my breath.
My friend has some pictures that are amazing. But, they are composed pictures and people wearing clothes they would not otherwise wear, in situations and poses that they would not be in if not for the camera. This is fiction.
At one time, I helped him with lighting as he was doing a shoot of models. One of the models was frankly not very attractive. Heroin sheek gone bad. The pictures of her were very flattering. I was amazed when I saw them. She, along with several other models had aspirations of law school. I'd bet anything it hasn't happened...for any of them.
On my recent vacation, many areas with gorgeous scenery were traversed. The Bitteroots and the Cascades were amazing. At the risk of taking an analogy too far, landscape photography is akin to documentary. It can be stunning, powerful, but also painfully boring. Ken Burns can take a great 2 hour informational movie and compress it into 14 long painful hours.
In my earlier motorcycle travels, many scenic pullouts where stopped at for pictures. After traveling all over North America for more than 10 years now, the scenery is still as stunning, but it begins to fall flat in pictures. No two mountains look the same, but the pictures in retrospect often do. Canyons, lakes, rivers, oceans and bluffs are all worthy of pictures but they can get somewhat redundant.
There were some amazing landscape shots taken on the trip. But looking at endless landscape photos of another person's vacation is like watching home movies (documentaries) about another person's children. It gets old quick.
Often, scenery can't be taken in by a picture. I love the big empty of western Dakotas and eastern Montana, but pictures don't do the expanse justice - even panoramas. I have found that pictures with a flat road running through them do give the feeling that exists when in these big empty areas. I have many pictures like this taken from the motorcycle while going down the road. I have a hard time deciding which I like better, but I'm probably alone in that respect.
But the picture that captures the vacation wasn't from one of these scenic areas. It happened at the Pacific Ocean, in Seaside, Oregon. I had just had my picture taken touching the Pacific Ocean and was walking back. A picture was taken that I didn't know about, and it caught me in one of those serene carefree moments rarely repeated.
The scene was near the apex of the trip. Physically about as far from home as I got on the trip. More importantly, metaphorically it was about as far from home as I got as well. The moment the camera caught me could be thought of as in complete apathy but not in a negative way. Relaxed without trying.
I wasn't sure if I should post the picture. Technically it is terrible. The late-day low-angle sunlight shrouds half my face in shadows. The people in the background are distracting. I'm in it and I do not like having my picture taken. On a motorcycle there is only room for so much clothes so I'm wearing atypical beach clothes; cargo shorts and a slightly grubby t-shirt, socks and cheapo imitation Chuck Taylor's.
Anybody looking through a stack of pictures would not give a second glance to this picture, and it isn't even one of my favorites. It probably is the picture I've gone back to more often though.
The moment that picture was taken though can't be repeated. It would not be possible to compose the moment in a portrait. It is a representation, a snapshot, of why vacation exists at all.
It is non-fiction. Like any non-fiction, it can help put reality in perspective - hopefully.
No comments:
Post a Comment